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[Gravious]

I still say you really should go for SDL+OpenGL for future projects, but reading Alec's reasoned response has me in agreement, just get BQ out the door first!

I've refactored my codebase and thus lengthened development on my own projects enough to want to scrap one game at the verge of release (Atoms) and even give up on 3 others before i started in earnest.

now i have a new codebase that though its nowhere near complete, does what i want, i'm happy to carry on.  I'd hate you to abandon BQ because its too much effort to get something working mid-conversion...

[BMcC]

Grav:  No!  Not an option.  I need to get to my own games ASAP.  It's been too long!

And there's no way I'm going to abandon BQ, believe me.  Especially not now.  (Honestly, I don't think it's even possible for me to get that stuck on something.)

Alec:  Hm, so... what should I do?  I imagine that adding to this engine would be easier than having a separate codebase for new projects, but I might be (likely am) wrong.

Would you be willing to help me piece together the new components?  I find no pleasure in engine building, but I need certain things to move forward.  (Halp, plx!)

[BMcC]

News:  I think I'm going to split up the To Do list for the next build and get an update out soon.  Smaller, more frequent updates is the way to go, I think...

Also!  I found a solution for my Big Engine.  So BQ is going to become a super-fleshed-out 2D-only engine.  This will be good.

[Snakey]

I'll add in my 2 cents, for what its worth, there would be quite a number of problems shifting to OpenGL at this stage anyways. For a start, the dimensions of most bitmaps right now are weird sizes.

So even if you were to change all that and make all bitmaps powers of two, it will be a pain in the ass for everyone else.

If you were to load bitmaps, then cut them up in memory to power of two chunks, you would wind up with a lot of texture handles (Some of the large tilesets may produce a hundred or so texture handles!) and this isn't really an efficient way of doing things.

Texture sampling is also going to be an issue. Ideally with the way OpenGL works and so forth, you will probably see a lot of bleeding issues. I generally give a 1 pixel border on a lot of my OpenGL resources so that I don't get this problem, although you can some what fix this by using different sampling methods.

I don't believe the switch to OpenGL is going to add much, and will probably be a big gigantic head ache for you. I can understand why, you may have liked to do it ... but certainly it would have been better to have done it from the start.

My next 2D engine for my game (which is still in documentation planning) will be using OpenGL however, so feel free to chat to me about it at any time!

 

[BMcC]

Word, yeah.  I had decided to keep BQ a purely 2D engine and make a new OpenGL engine from scratch.

I may still need help with that, yeah.

[Gravious]

How's the OpenGL stuff going Bran?

[BMcC]

I haven't directly worked on it since I talked to you last (been making records and working a small 2D game), but I don't think it'll be too much trouble once I get back to it.  Just need to buckle down.

[BMcC]

Good news everyone!  The Scripting Guide has been filled out!

Now there's no excuse for not creating new and exciting objects and enemies. 

If you need clarification on anything, or if you think I should add anything to the guide, just say so.

Happy scripting!

[BMcC]

UPDATE: Making this game with Kyle "Savage" Pulver has forced me to add scrolling and camera controls, make some optimizations, allow multiple display layers for particles (which I used to get a parallax effect), and, best of all, add the almighty SCREEN SHAKE effect.  (!)

Today I think I'm going to work in adaptive audio.

Since the map size is static, you can't scroll in BQ (sorry!), but it is now fully supported by the engine, with the in-game editor and all.  You will be able to access all the other neat stuff once I update the build, though.  Also, none of this breaks BQed, thank goodness.

P.S. I was this close to calling the BQ engine the Monocle Engine, but since that's now a (better) thing, I think it'll be called the CHARM engine (for reasons all my own).  So the expanded version of the external editor could be called CHARMed, which is awesome.

[TideGear]

UPDATE: Making this game with Kyle "Savage" Pulver has forced me to add scrolling and camera controls, make some optimizations, allow multiple display layers for particles (which I used to get a parallax effect), and, best of all, add the almighty SCREEN SHAKE effect.  (!)

Careful, BMcC! Many a lesser soul has become a hollow shell of what it once was by working with "The Pulver-izer"!

[BMcC]

Too true.  (That's why I'm dressed in layers.)

Tangent: I admire how regularly he showers.

[eerr]

why .rar?

[BMcC]

Why not?

[Phasma Felis]

Why not?

'Cause Windows doesn't know how to read it by default. And all the programs it recommends are nagware, I think.

Is there a good free .RAR reader for Windows?

[Wahooney]

Google '7zip'. It's free, open, nag free and it supports the brilliant 7z format.